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800% cancer increase on HAART, 200% heart attack increase on HAART or off heart is 2x worse than that..

post your experience or what you have read....

basically we know that after 5 7 10 15 years if we dont start HAART we are dead so we are happy to be alive and the Dr.s are happy to have saved our lives and the pharma execs. are really happy to make 50 million a year off us and give tons to bush and republicans to get more money for themselves and war and killing people

but now the data is coming in about exactly how damaging haart is for many organs and the facts as II have read them are as follows..please post what you have read... this is from science articles

800% cancer increase in certain types of cancer on HAART, for hiv this is 8x increase 8x the risk so if ave. is 1 in 80,000 people get this type cancer for hiv on haart it is one in 10,000

200% heart attack increase on HAART

liver

kidney

KS -- a type of cancer caused by one of 9 herpes virus-- if you do poppers perhaps have 1000x better change

off heart is 2x worse than that -- this is how i read the stacatto study if you go on and off therapy you have a 2x chance of dying or getting diseases

from just talking to people, even on haart they always seem to be getting shingles, warts, MRSA nasty infections abscesses and many other things

please list your experiences maybe it is time to start looking at all the problems of haart

800% cancer increase on HAART, 200% heart attack increase on HAART or off heart is 2x worse than that..

post your experience or what you have read....

basically we know that after 5 7 10 15 years if we dont start HAART we are dead so we are happy to be alive and the Dr.s are happy to have saved our lives and the pharma execs. are really happy to make 50 million a year off us and give tons to bush and republicans to get more money for themselves and war and killing people

but now the data is coming in about exactly how damaging haart is for many organs and the facts as II have read them are as follows..please post what you have read... this is from science articles

800% cancer increase in certain types of cancer on HAART, for hiv this is 8x increase 8x the risk so if ave. is 1 in 80,000 people get this type cancer for hiv on haart it is one in 10,000

200% heart attack increase on HAART

liver

kidney

KS -- a type of cancer caused by one of 9 herpes virus-- if you do poppers perhaps have 1000x better change

off heart is 2x worse than that -- this is how i read the stacatto study if you go on and off therapy you have a 2x chance of dying or getting diseases

from just talking to people, even on haart they always seem to be getting shingles, warts, MRSA nasty infections abscesses and many other things

please list your experiences maybe it is time to start looking at all the problems of haart

OMG -- Who are you and where do you get all this "data" you type in these threads???

basically we know that after 5 7 10 15 years if we dont start HAART we are dead

Well that has been already proven wrong by one or two people here.

I in general agree with the statement that HAART can cause significant damage to the body at the same time it saves you from an untimely death from HIV - but I really do got to second bocker and ask where you get your statistics from.

If your going to post something from your so called "scientific articles" please post us with the source of the information. As you may know the internet is full of false information so you need to provide us with the source so we can decide for ourselves if its bulshit or not...

Im not saying that the information you stated is correct or incorrect but sources help validate what you are trying to say...

800% cancer increase on HAART, 200% heart attack increase on HAART or off heart is 2x worse than that..

bimazek: You've been asked REPEATEDLY when making wild claims (like with poppers) to provide factual links. Where are you getting these numbers from? And please realize that just finding some spurious link on google doesn't mean it's actually true. The internet is full of lies.

Now, I do not doubt that there is, or soon will be, increases in cancer in HIV patients. I mean, you know a suppressed immune system for decades will tend to cause problems... that's a bit of a no brainer. But when you throw out these wildly huge numbers you cause nothing but hysteria on this board, which is completely jejune and irresponsible.

These are facts unfortunately, i am not happy to report them, the heart attack statistics where posted on this site just a week ago, if you read that heart attack data is says we have 2x chance on haart. i am just trying to see what all the things are that we must watch for..

The point of my post was to try to quantify all the various cancers and the % increase on haart and off haart as a way to try to see which ones were most likely and which ones we can screen for more often... basically in my opinion cancer produces markers in the blood and all hiv poz should be tested for these markers once every year or so... i was not trying to upset anyone, but weekly we read about the exact problems of haart or of hiv on haart and i was hoping to get feed back on what things we must get tested for ...

google scholar only allows science journals ...

I will post the links below... but these are just some, it would take hundreds of links to list them all .., all these stats are from peer reviewed science papers in google scholar which just allows science papers

The poppers science is very clear, poppers cause herpes to explode, herpes causes KS, and just from the sweet guys i talk to in my support group who have had terrible KS they all used poppers alot, but above are 888 articles to show it. i do have a photo of a friend of a friend who'se entire nose is purple with KS from poppers.

HIV cancer 116,000 articleshttp://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cancer+increase+HIV&btnG=Searchall sep. articles just on a 20 min review of the above"4-fold increase in HIV infected women""continuing increase in the incidence of primary central nervous system non-Hodgkin lymphoma ""HIV-related lung cancer in the era of highly active antiretroviral therapy - ""Rates of lip cancer were clearly increased overall in people with HIV infection""all non-AIDS-defining cancers was considered, HIV-positive men had a nearly twofold excess (95% CI: 1.2-2."

http://www.aidsonline.com/pt/re/aids/abstract.00002030-200003310-00011.htm;jsessionid=G5cplTyQQzytM7yS0dvLwsFrp2zlvPdnvGpmhJ1d2DKT08hMTLDJ!-1465501618!-949856144!8091!-1Results: A total of 19 609 person-years of observation were accumulated among HIV-positive men, and 7957 person-years among HIV-negative men. Among HIV-positive men, statistically significant increased SIR were seen for Hodgkin's disease (HD) (SIR = 8.7), liver cancer (SIR = 11.0), and cancer of the salivary glands (SIR = 33.6). An excess of lung cancer was seen among intravenous drug users (IDU), but not among homosexual men. When the risk of all non-AIDS-defining cancers was considered, HIV-positive men had a nearly twofold excess (95% CI: 1.2-2.. A risk of similar magnitude emerged among HIV-negative IDU (95% CI: 1.0-4.5), largely attributable to lung cancer and HD. Conclusion: These findings confirm that HIV infection increases the risk of HD, whereas they suggest that the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma may also be enhanced by HIV infection.

i am sorry if someone likes poppers i cannot not speak when i know my gay friends are killing themselves

OK, so we're all gonna die. We can help death bring in the crops by being inactive, eating like shit, stressing ourselves out, not sleeping, smoking and doing copious amounts of drugs... it seems some of these may help cancer and heart disease a bit.

it's fine that you're upset about not enough money being used for HIV research. You're not a newbie if you've dealt with this for 26 years. If you've been diagnosed two years ago and struggling with this then you're more than welcome to post and ask questions on here. We're just wondering what your usual posts mean, and they are hard to read, that's all.

Just when I thought it was safe to go outside this gets posted. But statistics never lie...I checked and men with hiv are ten times more likely to have super large penises than non hiv men. Five times more likely to appear on Dancing With The Stars and twice as likely to drive an import. But the really white knuckle part was that they are 1.2 times as likely to ...and this shatters me to the core....to be related to Pat Robertson......

Anyway, I checked with my doctor and he has definitely confirmed that i am going to die from something, but as long as he keeps getting paid, he isnt going to burst my bubble and tell me....

Bottom line is that you can worry yourself to death ...do the best you can and get on with it.

Pilot (who checked the Big Ol Bible he has and has found no loop holes as yet but will keep looking)

Bizamek, while you have every right to post what you want, I would kindly suggest (when making grand conclusions from sets of diverse studies) that you take the time to fully understand and adequately explain the context and complexities/uniqueness of each study. You have study after study cited that contain people on HAART, people not on HAART, studies that are 8-10 years old (and older), studies with varying drugs, studies including poppers, studies that show decreases in cancers on HAART, studies that show increases in cancers not on HAART, and on and on.

To me this post is pretty irresponsible and while the majority of people here (I would safely assume) are experienced/knowledgeable enough to make proper distinctions between facts, hysteria, and wild-eyed irresponsible conclusions, there are others who are not as versed yet. When you post and make grandiose conclusions about serious consequences of a disease based on a hodgepodge of studies, you should really make sure you've thought it through pretty well - because what you write can impact people and cause them to make decisions that may or may not be based on correct interpretations/proper context for each diverse HIV experience.

Mike (Who wishes there was a resident medical professional on these boards who could address posts like this and empower people with the proper facts.)

Logged

"Get your medical advice from Doctors or medical professionals who you trust and know your history."

"Beware of the fortune teller doom and gloomers who seek to bring you down and are only looking for company, purpose and validation - not your best physical/mental interests."

"You know you all are saying that this is incurable. When the real thing you should be saying is it's not curable at the present time' because as we know, the great strides we've made in medicine." - Elizabeth Edwards

Bizamek, I will join the chorus and ask that you provide EVIDENCE for these wild assertions (no, random search results provide nothing of the kind). The KS/poppers theory has LONG SINCE been found baseless.

People are worried enough as it is without this kind of scaremongering.

I think the picture with regard to what HIV+ people are at increased risk from is complicated.

I certainly paid attention to the recent finding that HIV+ people were more likely to have an MI, as it runs in my family anyway. The data comes from some 24,000 patients in the DAD (Data Collection on Adverse Events with anti-HIV drugs) study.

It is sobering, with a relative increased risk of 16% for each year you are on a PI. This drops to a 10% increased relative risk if you cut out metabolic abnormalities. It's important to understand the difference between relative and absolute risk - even with a doubling of relative risk, the absolute risk can still be very low.

And so it is for HIV positive patients on PIs - the absolute risk of having an MI even after 5 years of PI treatment is still only 0.6% per year. Which is not massive. In addition, it is a smaller effect than that caused by smoking, or by being a man, and is about the same increase in risk as seen by being diabetic. The trick is to minimise your existing risk factors for having a heart attack - stop smoking, loose weight, diet, exercise, etc.

The editorial accompanying the article is written by Dr James Stein who says:

"This risk of cardiovascular disease would be considered low or at most moderate, depending on a patient's risk factor burden. Thus there does not seem to be an epidemic on the horizon – simply a risk that needs to be managed.”

The picture with cancer is more complicated. At the end of the day, it's not as if any of us have much of a choice. If you need to be on drugs, you must take them - there is no evidence that the drugs are any worse than HIV infection alone in damaging the heart, kidney or driving the development of cancer. HIV does all of these things. The people who interrupted treatment in the SMART study had an even higher risk of MI.

Thanks to both Matt Mee and Tim for posting that info and I honestly am "heartened" by that article.

I admit I still think the damage can be stronger than what we already know and I don't think this is the final word on the long term damage that HAART causes.

I stress that I in no way advocate not taking HAART, but I've seen so many times in the past whether it is HIV meds to silicone breast implants that the evidence was minimal risk only to discover (how many years) later that in fact there was a significant health risk.

Again - I don't think most of us have the luxury of not taking meds and I think the risk at this point is worth it, but I admit the fear remains....just not in the sort of ranges that bizmark notes.

"Concerns that years of antiretroviral therapy will kill more and more people with heart attacks rest mainly on results from the multicohort D:A:D study, which reckoned a 17% jump in myocardial infarction risk for every extra year of treatment. It's easy to forget that a similarly massive cohort study, this one involving the US Veterans Administration (VA), charted dwindling hospital admission rates for cardiovascular or cerebrovascular disease among people taking antiretroviral from 1995 to 2001. In a review lecture at EACS, Düsseldorf HIV clinician Stefan Mauss noted that an additional 3 years of follow-up in the VA cohort still failed to turn up any hint that prolonged antiretroviral therapy poses a serious threat of heart disease. "

Jury out yet?

On cancer, any number of studies report cancer incidence overall down in people on treatment, mainly because of a reduction on KS and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The Institute of Cancer Research (UK) epidemiological study, reporting in 2002, said:

"Since the widespread use of HAART, there have been substantial reductions in the incidence Kaposi's sarcoma and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in HIV-infected people but, so far, no substantial change in the incidence of other cancers"

But also up are anal cancer and lung cancer. The reasons are unclear. Lung cancer, although rare, is the third most common cancer seen in HIV-positive individuals. 3.7 times more common (range: 2-7) than in non-HIV-positive people <<< er that would be HIV-negative people then, matt... A recent French study reports on the increased incidence of anal cancer in HIV-postive gay men.

Jury out yet?

Seems to me we don't know enough to make definitive statements on increased/decreased risk/incidence of heart disease/cancer either way that takes accurate account of the contribution of HIV itself and/or the burden of long-term combo and/or age and/or living with a functional but depleted immune system and/or coinfections like hepatitis and/or lifestyle factors like smoking.

I had no idea my post would cause controversy. I am less than 10 months from being diagnosised. So i am not really looking to go on the emotional journey of having hiv and dying from hiv, i am looking to fight for a solution... and i am looking for us all to fight together... that march sounds good...

What my point is ... is that from all the studies that i have read... it boils down to this.. i am not trying to alarm anyone.but i would like people who are poz to ... keep marching and not get complacient and at least try to fight for more rights and research funding... and not just take haart and wish for best...

yes...

if we do not take haart we will die eventually take haart and do not miss a dose...

if you go on and off haart you have a double chance of serious diseases and death than if you just stay on haart

if you are on haart there is a double chance of some cancers, a 4 fold increase in others, and 8 or 9 times (800%) increase in still others... eat right and make best to not let cancer the upper hand

especially if you smoke or drink or use poppers... try best to moderate reduce

I went to a film festival with some friends one guy in car works at largest hiv clinic in city with 4000 plus people... i said... what is the truth... he sees every one that comes in ... and the ones that get worse

he said that mostly the people who are dying now are the ones using alcolhol to excess, using drugs and meth and smoking, that was his opinion from seeing people since 1996 when haart came out... ( and some who are warriors who have been struggling since very early days)

in a separate issue and i want to bring it back to this... i am not satisfied with haart as the only option and I have never yet been on haart....

i have a desire to find something better... gene therapy, vaccines, CD8 treatments

IN 1985 I read that Dr. bruce walker discovered that the CD8 cells become inactive in HIV infection. I knew enough to know that this was extremely bad ... and a key to the disease

well i would say that i had a vision or some kind of epithany. I was walking down the street in SF after reading the article...

I thought to myself this is the key to solving this disease... getting the CD8 cells to work again... this was 1985

all i am saying is i had a thought and idea, obviously many scientists thought the same thing and it took 22 years to discover WHY

which was my hypothosis in September of 2006 when i spent 500 hours reading about CD8 and PD-1 and found an obscure disease called DILS and the fact that LTNP sometimes get DILS and it means their CD8 cells are working so well fighting the hiv that DILS is result

(in the sept. 2006 to now time frame I put a bit of work into trying to start a biotech company to address CD8, but the biotech sector for investors is in a slump because hundreds of billions was invested in last 15 years and not enough huge successes, well it is a cycle and it is not a good time to try to start bio tech) and i have my hands full with disease...

i guess i just feel more research needs to go into this area...

and that more attention needs to be paid to the bad side of haart

and that greed has distroyed the ability of this country to solve problems quickly accept go to war

and that all of us who are on haart or going to be on haart must not stop fighting for more money for research and

for more money for the homeless aids on the street

and more help for

it just seems like everyone on haart needs to keep fighting marching

i was marching in 1981, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, etc

we need to live with hiv and haart but fight for more money for research

pick up the phone

do what larry kramer said in his speech and force these govts and drug companies to fund CD8 research with 1/10th of iraq war budget

we must fight to stop immigration from anti-gay countries and cultures

these people vote and they influence elections and get more republicans elected.

haart is not good enough

it has too many side effects

this disease would have been solved by now if it was not for the greed of the republicans and the power of the religious right in politics

Your motivation for the original post seems carelessly exclamatory, and without adequate foundations for your proclaimations, you seem to be simply another alarmist - fear ridden and remorseful of your diagnosis. In the name of those on this board seeking comfort of facts, I ask of you...

PLEASE DON'T POST YOUR BULLSHIT FACTS ANYMORE.

And, so as not to alarm, needlessly, people who look to this board for facts and hope - please provide reputable sources for these things that you purport. Otherwise, they're merely a course in alarmist thinking with no other potential or motivation than to strike fear into the psyche of the sick. (deplorable to say the least)

When you stir the shit, you can guarantee that there will be stench. Don't be daft.

What's hillarious about this thread, or indeed any thread started by Bimazek, is not that he posts these supposed "facts", but the responses they generate.

The AIDSMEDS fourms have always had one or two chickens littles/panic merchant types who race about the place breathlessly "exposing" the horrible evils of HAART, western orthodox medicine and the wicked sinfulness of Big Pharma. Bimazek is no different. He clearly has a particular view of health care and it's related subjects and he's pushing that agenda.

And that's cool with Matty the Damned. People are entitled to believe what ever batshit insane stuff they like. I don't have to believe it along with them.

Anyone with a modicum of commonsense should know that statements containing numbers like 800% and 200% almost always unmitigated bullshit. So when I read people complaining that these sorts of figures "freak them out" I just have to laugh.

Before posting in threads like these to complain and berate the OP for scaring you so horribly have any of you ever considered searching the poz.com/AIDSMEDS site to see if there is any rational science based information on the subject? Or taking the time to phone your ASO/HIV information service? Or even asking your doctor?

It's really not that difficult. We all have a responsibility to keep ourselves abreast of the real deal when it comes to HIV and it's associated issues. Whining about Bimazek's bizzarre offerings is a total cop out.

And for those of you who still labour under the misconception that thebody is some sort of reputable health site, allow Matty the Damned to disabuse you of the notion. Frankly, thebody is a joke and people who rely on it for information when services like AIDSMEDS exist deserve to blunder about in ignorance.

So railing against Bimazek for posting his quaint little threads full of mangled facts and flat out rubbish is quite pointless. Most of the time I can't make head nor tail of what he's posting anyway. I'm sorry if that sounds mean, but it's just the plain truth.

bimazek we're not mean, we just think that your posts are very difficult to understand, and we would prefer to have an opinion instead of a cut&paste. We're just asking you to give us the links to your research so we can read about it, and your comments, then we can discuss. Cut&paste of a study is not helping.

harvard has this cool site.... i just found... you guys hurt me in your personal attacks... i just wanted to find out the facts the numbers and i just wrote my perception of the science articles i have read...

approximately 7 percent of all cancers have been linked to infections. In developing countries, this number reaches almost 25 percent.

mayo clinic siteor instance, an American man's absolute risk of developing prostate cancer in his lifetime is about 17 percent. Put another way, about 17 out of every 100 men will develop prostate cancer at some time in their lives.

Keep in mind that lifetime risk isn't the risk that a person will develop cancer in the next year or next five years. An individual's cancer risk has a lot to do with other factors, such as his or her age. For instance, a woman's lifetime risk of developing colon and rectal cancer is just over 5 percent, or about 537 cases per 10,000 women. But her risk of developing colon and rectal cancer before the age of 40 is .07 percent, or about seven cases per 10,000 women.

For instance, relative risk might compare the lung cancer risk for people who smoke with the lung cancer risk in a similar group of people who don't smoke. You might hear relative risk being expressed like this: The risk of lung cancer for men who smoke is 23 times higher than the risk for men who don't smoke. So the relative risk of lung cancer for men who smoke is 23.

For example, the risk of lung cancer for men who smoke is more than 2,000 percent higher than it is for men who don't smoke. Keep in mind that when you hear about relative risk, there's no upper limit to the percentage increase in risk. Most people think 100 percent is the highest possible risk, but that isn't true when talking about relative risk.

A relative risk of 100 percent means your risk is twice as high as that of someone without that risk factor. A 200 percent relative risk means that you are three times as likely to develop that condition.

bimazek: pointing out that you make repeated wild unfounded claims about, for example, poppers or employ spurious "facts" is NOT a personal attack. If you insist on being a martyr I'll have to request that you come down off the cross as we could all use the wood.